Juvenile Detention in California

“Today is the beginning of the end of juvenile imprisonment as we know it,” Gov. Gavin Newsom students at the O.H. Close Youth Correctional Facility in January. “Juvenile justice should be about helping kids imagine and pursue new lives,” he told students and journalists in Stockton, Calif. “not jumpstarting the revolving door of the criminal justice system.”

In Gov. Newsom’s January budget, he pledged to shift control of the state’s youth prison system away from corrections officials and toward government health and human services providers.

The California Health and Human Services Agency will oversee more than 660 young offenders in a detention center in Stockton, Calif. This is a small population compared to the 39,000 youth in probation or detained in county juvenile halls statewide.

In contrast to his initial pledge, on October 12 Gov. Newsom vetoed Senate Bill 284, which aimed to shrink the agency. The bill would have increased the cost for counties to send youth to the three in-state correctional facilities by five times higher than the current amount. This would have potentially incentivized counties to keep youth near home and lower recidivism rates after incarceration, according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.

Newsom’s actions have received mixed reviews including from Cyn Yamashiro, L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas’ appointee to the Los Angeles County Probation Commission. Yamashiro said he feels like Newsom’s pledge is more symbolic than a sign that change is coming soon.

“Youth detention rates are at an all-time low,” Yamashiro said, “not particularly because of the initiatives but because crime has gone down across the board since 1995.”

Kaile Shilling—who is the executive director of Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network, a program funded by LA County—said that although crime has fallen the governor’s pledge will likely help. “An intangible impact created by a declaration of intention from the state level and [it] creates an emphasis on re-framing how we approach young people.” Shilling said.

California’s treatment of juveniles is complex and Quintin Monk, 30, is one of the many who knows it personally. He experienced over 10 county and state level juvenile detention prisons from the ages of 14 to 18.

The Shaping of a Criminal

Monk was an inmate in Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in 2002 at the age of 14 and returned at the age of 18. He first entered Los Padrinos after he was convicted of stealing back-to-school clothing from Macy’s.

Quintin Monk in 2016

Under a plan passed by the legislature in 2007, eight of 11 county operated youth facilities were closed due to lawsuits over 23-hour lockdowns, beatings by staff and the caging of children. Control of youth detention was shifted to county probation departments.

“[The treatment] was terrible, you’re in a little locked room all day,” Monk recalls. “To be safe, they have to jump you into a gang. If you’re not in a gang, you get beat all day and guards ignore it because you’re a criminal.”

California’s juvenile justice system has seen a dramatic transformation over the last 15 years. Then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, reorganized the California Youth Authority, the department that oversaw state youth correctional facilities. In 2005, statewide correctional facilities housed as many as 10,000 teenagers; compared to the 660 youth that are now held at four state facilities.

California remains one of 10 states continues to house the juvenile justice division under a corrections agency, meaning that prisoners are treated as a criminal problem. Forty states have placed juvenile detention under health and human services or child welfare departments.

Growing up in Los Angeles’ South Central neighborhood as one of the several children of a drug addicted mother, Monk followed in his older brother’s footsteps, stealing clothing and selling drugs to make money.

Monk feels that Gov. Newsom’s plan might make it easier for young people who have made mistakes to break their patterns of recidivism and allow them to find a better future.

“It’s hard because when I came out [of juvenile detention] at 18, no one wanted to hire a criminal, so I went to what I knew: the fast life," Monk recalls. “[It] ain’t really worth it. It becomes addictive. Once you start, it’s hard to stop. I just wished someone stopped me.”

Addressing Trauma In Detention

Sean Cochrun, the behavioral director at the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice, says that in order for young people to break the cycle of recidivism, departments have to address the teenagers’ psychological and emotional scars.

Youth transported from the cafeteria back to their rooms

“They are acting out because of trauma in their past,” Cochrun said, “but unfortunately the correctional department doesn’t have the time for that. It’s just, sentence them and go.”

Cochrun doesn’t see his job changing with Newsom’s pledge. He feels like change has started snowballing into effect prior to Newsom's budget proposal.

His focus with the different correctional centers in San Francisco is creating a strong community of help and understanding, to get at the root for their behaviors.

Monk said his behavior and life was shaped by his experience.

“Two of my friends got killed before I got locked up,” Monk said. “In a way locking me up saved my live but also ruined it.”

Back when Monk was released from his last juvenile placement, there wasn’t any way to clear his record. He found it difficult to get a job, so he went back to petty theft.

Monk believes that if anyone helped him to get on a path toward education, or other laws helped to straighten his life out, he would have gone to college instead of just prowling for money survive.

Education Instead of Detention

His half-sister Sierra Williams, is a college graduate who works as an industrial engineer in Seattle, says the system failed her brother. “My mom isn’t really a parent, so I made sure to find people to mentor me and steer me in the right direction,” Williams said. “Quintin didn’t have that, and that’s what made all the difference.”

Sister Sierra Williams, 23, after her graduation.

Williams attended USC, and where she could build up an array of mentors to lead her in the right direction. “I got out of my community, to academia, and now I have a different network,” Williams said. “But [Monk] stayed there with all his friends with felonies and misdemeanors until they started dying or becoming inmates.”

Monk just finished serving a 32-month sentence that he blames on his ex-wife who was prostituting to support them both while he was in trade school. Since he received financial benefits from her crime, and he had a previous criminal record, police arrested him, too.

Three weeks after his release from prison, he’s in a halfway house—an institution that helps people with criminal backgrounds re-integrate into society—looking forward to a life outside of prison.

“I’ve spent half my life in the system,” Monk said.

He recalled the time before his mother started using drugs, before he knew about prison, poverty or so much emotional pain. There were good moments.

Back then, he knew the value of a crispy dollar bill that he would take to the local ice cream truck where he would buy a delicious waffle cone vanilla ice cream. The ice cream man would laugh at his eagerness, and Monk would eat it so fast that it gave him a tummy ache.

Now, he says, “I want to buy an ice cream truck because those are all the good memories I have left.”

“I want to see other kids smiles to remember better times.”